Modern telephone systems often support functionality for forwarding voice messages, also referred to herein as voicemail messages, to an electronic mail (“e-mail”) account. When a new voicemail message is received, an e-mail message is transmitted to the intended recipient of the voicemail that includes the voicemail as an attachment. The intended recipient can utilize an e-mail client application to receive the e-mail and to play back the attached voicemail message.
One difficulty with current phone systems capable of forwarding voice messages to e-mail accounts is that these phone systems have no way of knowing that a forwarded voicemail message has been heard by the intended recipient. As a result, users of these types of phone systems will often be presented with other notifications that a new voicemail message has been received even after they have heard a voicemail message.
For instance, a user may listen to a voicemail forwarded in an e-mail message and then return home to find a light flashing on her telephone indicating that a new message has been received. When the user checks her voicemail she finds that the “unheard” voicemail was, in fact, the one that she already listened to via the forwarded e-mail message. This can be very annoying for a telephone system user.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.